Great Canadian Skyline Thread II

[Martin Mtl]

Credit photo: https://www.instagram.com/hidrone_imagerie_numerique/


Credit photo: https://www.instagram.com/hidrone_imagerie_numerique/



Credit photo: https://www.instagram.com/hidrone_imagerie_numerique/

[WhipperSnapper]

I like the concept of the uplights. That's just a whole lot of the company's colour. It's gotta be bright near the source to reach those heights

[someone123]

Capture from a video

[Nouvellecosse]

Very nice Halifax and Montreal images! The Halifax one really shows how different it is from any other city of its size range in the country.

[zoomer]

What's up with the green lighting in Montreal? St Patrick's Day?

Great Halifax picture as well. Nouv - from this pic what do you see as the difference?

Funny, as I was planning on starting a new thread about how a combination of factors makes each Canadian city unique and interesting.

[G.S MTL]

Originally Posted by zoomer

What's up with the green lighting in Montreal? St Patrick's Day?

Great Halifax picture as well. Nouv - from this pic what do you see as the difference?

Funny, as I was planning on starting a new thread about how a combination of factors makes each Canadian city unique and interesting.

Lol st Patrick’s day? St Patrick’s day is in March ..The green Represents Desjardins bank colours.

[zoomer]

Lol, well not all pictures posted on SSP are taken the same day or even month!

I thought for sure St Patrick's because that much green all year long is garrish, unless that pic exaggerates the effect.

[TorontoDrew]

Flatiron by Jack Landau, on Flickr

King Streetcar by Jack Landau, on Flickr

Distillery Winter Village VI by Jack Landau, on Flickr

Queen and Broadview by Jack Landau, on Flickr

Mill St. by Jack Landau, on Flickr

King and University by Jack Landau, on Flickr

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by zoomer

What's up with the green lighting in Montreal? St Patrick's Day?

Great Halifax picture as well. Nouv - from this pic what do you see as the difference?

Funny, as I was planning on starting a new thread about how a combination of factors makes each Canadian city unique and interesting.

What do I see as "the" difference? Between which one(s)? There would be various differences between it and each of the comparison cities if i were using a range of say 200k-800k. Honestly, it would probably be less time consuming to ask what I see as the few (if any) similarities.

The setting would be the most obvious difference since the only other examples located on a harbour are Victoria, and St. John's but their harbours are much smaller. In one of the pictures you posted of Victoria last week you can barely even see the harbour which gives a very different vibe. Although Windsor has a similar waterfront look due to the large river so it's appearance may be the closest.

Halifax is much more centralized compared to KWC since the latter has several smaller city centres with far fewer highrises. Victoria has more numerous smaller condo buildings and fewer larger office buildings. In fact, in a lot of the pictures it doesn't even look like a traditional NA skyline but rather a dense European midrise centre. St. John's also doesn't have many highrises with views of its cityscape focused more on smaller historic buildings like the basilica, courthouse, etc. and of course the pomo "rooms" building. London, Regina and Saskatoon are probably most similar in built form but it seems like they have a more traditional North American CBD of tall buildings that ends more abruptly rather than a gradual tapering center of density the way Hfx and Victoria have. This also keeps Windsor from looking very similar despite the similarity in the settings.

The other metros in that range like Oshawa, St. Catherines, and Kelowna are even less similar as none have many city centre highrises, and other than Sherbrooke, they seem to have too small city centres to make a reasonable comparison.

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[zoomer]

Wow, those TO shots from Hamilton Beach Trail is like looking at digital art (1’s and 0’s) or a bar chart! Cool!

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

What do I see as "the" difference? Between which one(s)? There would be various differences between it and each of the comparison cities if i were using a range of say 200k-800k. Honestly, it would probably be less time consuming to ask what I see as the few (if any) similarities.

The setting would be the most obvious difference since the only other examples located on a harbour are Victoria, and St. John's but their harbours are much smaller. In one of the pictures you posted of Victoria last week you can barely even see the harbour which gives a very different vibe. Although Windsor has a similar waterfront look due to the large river so it's appearance may be the closest.

Halifax is much more centralized compared to KWC since the latter has several smaller city centres with far fewer highrises. Victoria has more numerous smaller condo buildings and fewer larger office buildings. In fact, in a lot of the pictures it doesn't even look like a traditional NA skyline but rather a dense European midrise centre. St. John's also doesn't have many highrises with views of its cityscape focused more on smaller historic buildings like the basilica, courthouse, etc. and of course the pomo "rooms" building. London, Regina and Saskatoon are probably most similar in built form but it seems like they have a more traditional North American CBD of tall buildings that ends more abruptly rather than a gradual tapering center of density the way Hfx and Victoria have. This also keeps Windsor from looking very similar despite the similarity in the settings.

The other metros in that range like Oshawa, St. Catherines, and Kelowna are even less similar as none have many city centre highrises, and other than Sherbrooke, they seem to have too small city centres to make a reasonable comparison.

Interesting observations! Halifax looks like it’s along a coastline versus a traditional or smaller harbour, like say St. John’s or Victoria. Here’s a shot from a couple years back that shows the narrow entrance to the harbour at the top right. At the bottom left the harbour continues past the Johnson Street bridge into the Gorge Waterway, which is a salt water tidal waterway that extends about 6 or 7 km inland. The inner harbour which downtown radiates is relatively large and a key focal point of course. Victoria doesn’t do tall office buildings, most buildings are on a smaller scale - there are of course large government office complexes, but not highrise and only one that I can think of you would call midrise. Employment, retail and residential is evenly spread so no obvious central business district. Of course you could say the main exceptions re: large scale buildings are those built well over a hundred years ago - the legislature buildings and the Empress Hotel.

Victoria BC October 10 Harbour Air by JohnnyJayEh, on Flickr

Several years old, but better shows the narrow entrance into the harbour:

Night shots inner harbour-2 by Andrew Chan, on Flickr

[Nouvellecosse]

^ Beautiful images!

Originally Posted by zoomer

Interesting observations! Halifax looks like it’s along a coastline versus a traditional or smaller harbour, like say St. John’s or Victoria. Here’s a shot from a couple years back that shows the narrow entrance to the harbour at the top right. At the bottom left the harbour continues past the Johnson Street bridge into the Gorge Waterway, which is a salt water tidal waterway that extends about 6 or 7 km inland. The inner harbour which downtown radiates is relatively large and a key focal point of course. Victoria doesn’t do tall office buildings, most buildings are on a smaller scale - there are of course large government office complexes, but not highrise and only one that I can think of you would call midrise. Employment, retail and residential is evenly spread so no obvious central business district. Of course you could say the main exceptions re: large scale buildings are those built well over a hundred years ago - the legislature buildings and the Empress Hotel.

Yeah the harbour probably just seems tiny to me because my main point of reference is the Halifax Harbour. I looked at Victoria Harbour in Google Maps and its widest point at the harbour mouth seems to be about 620m while its full length is about 9.5km with much of that length being extremely narrow (131m in the centre of the bottom pic where the condo roof blocks the harbour and only 17m by Tillicum bridge at the bottom left of the top pic for instance). By comparison, the mouth of the Halifax Harbour is about 9.75km wide between Southeast Passage and Chebucto Head, and its length is just over 24km. Its narrowest point is about 340m by the MacKay bridge but at downtown its width is about 1.5km. So it's definitely a major defining feature of the whole metro area.

[Metro-One]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

^ Beautiful images!



Yeah the harbour probably just seems tiny to me because my main point of reference is the Halifax Harbour. I looked at Victoria Harbour in Google Maps and its widest point at the harbour mouth seems to be about 620m while its full length is about 9.5km with much of that length being extremely narrow (131m in the centre of the bottom pic where the condo roof blocks the harbour and only 17m by Tillicum bridge at the bottom left of the top pic for instance). By comparison, the mouth of the Halifax Harbour is about 9.75km wide between Southeast Passage and Chebucto Head, and its length is just over 24km. Its narrowest point is about 340m by the MacKay bridge but at downtown its width is about 1.5km. So it's definitely a major defining feature of the whole metro area.

Not sure if this is relevant to the conversation but also in Victoria the shipbuilding and navy activities occur in a separate harbour in Esquimalt.

[zoomer]

Great description - I explored a bit on Google Earth. I guess the waters are still fairly well protected in Halifax harbour then? And as Metro-One pointed out the Naval base is around the next small harbour over from the inner harbour, but there is a small shipyard right in the inner harbour on the other side of the bridge - does mainly ship repair, ferry maintenance, and random construction projects.

[craner]

Originally Posted by someone123

Capture from a video

Love this photo - Hali getting hefty.
As the largest city on the east coast it seems like it should be bigger. Perhaps it’s second half million residents will come much quicker than the first.

[Arrdeeharharharbour]

When looking at the above pic of Halifax it strikes me that Cidadel Hill looks short behind the wall of downtown's taller buildings. However, for those who haven't visited the site, I'll point out here that none of those buildings are actually visible when walking around the grounds within the fort.

[q12]

You can see Citadel hill in this photo:

Halifax, Nova Scotia by Mark Brandon, on Flickr

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by zoomer

Great description - I explored a bit on Google Earth. I guess the waters are still fairly well protected in Halifax harbour then? And as Metro-One pointed out the Naval base is around the next small harbour over from the inner harbour, but there is a small shipyard right in the inner harbour on the other side of the bridge - does mainly ship repair, ferry maintenance, and random construction projects.

Yeah that harbour is like triple the size of the main one!

[Beedok]

Honestly, apart for the size of their harbours, Victoria and Halifax surprise me more by their similarities than their differences. Both being naval towns of about the same size with a large historic core and impressive skyline for their size.

[Nouvellecosse]

I think they have a lot of similarities on paper. It's just that they don't look at all similar, at least to my eye.